I guess we are all familiar with the old joke about the child given an empty box for Christmas and told it was an Action Man deserter. With an Aronofsky film you do at least get the Action Man; it’s just that the beautifully presented box is trying to persuade you that very basic doll is in fact a cutting edge, state of the art robotic figure.

If I were to open a review of the new, highly regarded film by one of the most acclaimed modern American directors, by describing it as a cross between Repulsion, The Red Shoes and Showgirls, you might consider that a rather lazy effort. So would I, but watching this psychological thriller centred in the world of the New York ballet company I just could not see past the influences, see anything beyond the things that I had seen before.

Nina (Portman) is a chaste, virginal ballerina who is plagued by disturbing visions of physical frailty and sexually predatory males. Aronofsky tight angles and restless attendant camera keep her tightly confined in a claustrophobic world where she is smothered by her mother’s attentions and the menace she perceives all around her. (So that would be the Repulsion.)

The visionary director (Cassel) has picked her to lead up his new Swan Lake. But while he sees her as ideal for the white swan he doubts her ability to take on the sexuality of the black swan. He pushes her and she begins to be subsumed within the role. (The Red Shoes.) The company recruits a new wild young dancer (Kunis) who Nina perceives as a threat (Showgirls.)

The film is certainly intense and unsettling. Before the film started I overheard a woman behind me complain that she’d had to leave a screening of Miral because the handheld shaky cam had induced motion sickness in her. I scoffed at her pathetic weakness but then spent the hour and three quarters wincing and squirming. Just watching ballerinas pirouette makes me queasy and the film really rubs in the frailty of the human body, how pathetically vulnerable it is to being snapped or split. Just scenes of people having their nails cut were ordeals.

Many people will be swept along by its swaggering technique and relentless intensity but it is thin stuff. Aronofsky fills the frame with mirrors, reflections and glimpses of doppelgangers. Visually its glimpsed menaces is reminiscent of Jacob’s Ladder, while the backstage horror melodrama is pure Hammer House of Horror.